Page 113 of Stone Vows

“Oh, my gosh. That’s incredible, Kyle.”

“It is. I wish Ellie were older. I’d take her to see his band.” He shrugs. “Maybe someday.”

I smile thinking that he would do that for her. I smile knowing that he’s thinking about a ‘someday.’

“It got me to thinking,” he says. “Do you have a name sign for Ellie?”

I shake my head. “I can’t give her one.”

“What? Why not?”

“In deaf culture, only another deaf person can give someone a name sign. It’s like a rite of passage into the deaf community. It might happen when they start going to school. Or when they pick their profession. Maybe it’s a physical trait, such as long hair, or a dimple, that gets used to make their sign. With that guy, Ridge, he’s probably played guitar his whole life and people came to associate him with it.”

“So, they take the first letter of their name and then do a sign that describes them?”

“Yup. Sometimes, they don’t even use a letter.”

“So, what do you thinkmyname sign would be?” he asks.

I study him for a minute. Then I sign the letter ‘K’ before putting two fingers on my wrist as if to feel my pulse.

“Ahhh, good one,” he says. Then he signs the letter ‘L’ and puts his pinky in his mouth.

“What does that mean?”

“That would beyourname sign,” he says. “Because you always chew on your pinky when you’re nervous.”

I look at my little finger and then back up at him. “I do not.”

“Oh, but you do,” he says.

“Well, then, it’s a good thing you’re not the giver of name signs. Because you are terrible at it.”

He laughs, holding out the fortune cookies so I can pick one. Just as we always do, each of us only selects one and he pushes the others aside. We’ll add them to our collection. The collection we started a few weeks ago. A jar we earmarked for extra fortune cookies. Because you never know when you might need one.

We open them up simultaneously and hide the slips of paper as we eat our cookies.

“Go ahead.” I nod to his hand.

He opens up his fortune and reads it. “He who dies with the most toys is still dead.” He looks up at me. “Damn, that’s deep.”

I read mine to myself, crumpling it up and throwing in the trash.

“Hey, that’s not allowed,” he says.

“Why not?You’vedone it.”

“Come on, Lex. What did it say?”

I sigh. “It said‘The world is your oyster’.”

He looks at me sadly. “It wasn’t your parents who made you eat them, was it?”

I shake my head. “He thought they were an aphrodisiac. He made me eat them a lot.”

Kyle looks disgusted. “They aren’t, you know. Medically speaking, oysters do nothing to stimulate sex hormones. But the theory is, they resemble female genitalia, thus they can increase sexual desire.”

“Only if you desire to have sex,” I say sadly.

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